On September 27th, Sohail Jagat defended his enthralling dissertation "Afterlives of Welcome: Encounter, Contact, and Refugee Incorporation in Berlin."

This dissertation is based on three years of ethnographic field research Sohail conducted between 2017 and 2022 with groups of asylum seekers that arrived in Berlin in 2015. It traces the complex and contradictory afterlives of German Willkommenskultur (Welcome Culture), examining the way it became a certain turning point for German society, Berlin, and Sohail's interlocutors.

Sohail's dissertation defense committee included his two co-advisors, John Borneman (Princeton Emeritus) and Serguei Oushakine, as well as his two examiners, Elizabeth Davis and Farhan Samanani (King's College London). 

Sohail will be joining the Max Planck Institute in Germany for a 4-year postdoctoral fellowship starting this October.